An interactive voice response system, which is sometimes referred to as a Call Tree, includes both hardware and a software application that accepts a combination of voice telephone input and/or touch-tone keypad selection and provides appropriate responses. An interactive voice response system is usually a part of a larger application that includes database access.
Merchant interactive voice response systems are generally not designed to handle secure electronic payments without the intervention of a human, who actually takes the order and queries the caller for payment or credit card information. Customers commonly issue authorizations to merchants over the telephone, but the process is relatively slow, cumbersome and relatively expensive due to the cost of live customer service employees and the amount of information involved. The customer service employees typically prompt customers for many pieces of information such as credit card numbers, expiration dates, security code, name on the credit card, credit card billing address, telephone number, etc. The obtained information must then be manually entered into a computer system, thereby contributing to the slowness and expense of the process.